This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

Monday, April 30, 2012

Jay-Z, apparently is the "author" and "creator" of the new Nets' logos, Brett Yormark, CEO of the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center, told CNBC's Darren Rovell in a live interview.

I wouldn't bet that the hip-hop star/entrepreneur/producer/"cultural icon" really drew it up, rather than helped choose from competing suggestions. Yormark called the black-and-white motif a major change from the red, white, and blue of the previous logo, and noted it was the only black-and-white one in the league.

One logo is a shield containing a basketball and the letter "B." The other is a circle with a "B" on a basketball, ringed by "Brooklyn" and "New York." (Yes, they're selling a lot of gear, as shown in the picture below right, from the Brooklyn Nets Twitter account.)

Yormark, asked by Rovell about principal owner Mikhail Prokhorov's promise of a championship in five years, pivoted and said suites had sold at 75% (really?) and sponsorships were going great.

He didn't specify, but, in late March, Forest City Enterprises reported that "64 percent of forecasted contractually obligated revenues for the [Barclays Center] arena are currently under contract."

New advertising: "Hello Brooklyn"

A new 30-second commercial, below, uses the work "Hello" to preface the following terms:

History

Tradition

Icons

Strength

Confidence

Black & White

New Home

Electricity

Future

Then "Hello Brooklyn" and "Brooklyn Now has a new home team. Season tickets on sale now." They gotta sell something.

New advertising: "Brooklyn Stand Up"

A second promo video, lasting 1:48, addresses Brooklyn as "you," as in "You're a vision," linking past and present. "Your streets pulse to your own beat," it states, with a shot of a row-house block quite different from the Atlantic Yards plan.

The narrator states: "And now, Brooklyn, we root for the same cause, because we believe in the same things that you do, that neighborhood is family and loyalty never goes away." Tell that to residents of Prospect Heights and nearby either displaced by the Atlantic Yards project or bearing the brunt of its impact.

The Brooklyn Nets have arrived. As a born-and-raised Brooklyn resident, whose parents still live here and work minutes away from the Barclays Center, it's a day I've been waiting for since the proposal was first floated in 2003. And it's a day that brings a new look to professional sports, a timeless one grounded in city history: the signage of New York's unparalleled subway system.

The new primary logo – created by Brooklyn's own JAY Z – retains the shield from its previous iteration, and adds that iconic Brooklyn 'B' to the basketball that has been part of every logo since the franchise's 1967 inception as the Americans. The Dodgers had their lettermark, and the Nets have added another model for the borough to bear. "Brooklyn," of course, is spelled out below. Nets CEO Brett Yormark called this "the new badge for Brooklyn," and JAY Z believes the design's boldness demonstrates confidence in the new direction.

The secondary logo, of the 'B' inside a basketball, surrounded by the words "Brooklyn New York" immediately popped an image into my head: "Planet Brooklyn." It's hard to explain the pride native Brooklynites feel for their home ("BK," "Bucktown," the "Brooklyn Zoo"), how outsiders don't get it and never really will; one measure might be trying to think if you've ever met someone from Brooklyn who said they were from "New York." Another could be the lines I once wrote in a spoken word poem:

I like to sport attitudes like
I'm better than you
because I'm from Brooklyn
… and that's just how we do.

Perhaps then, it seems odd that pride has found a partner in loss, the focus often narrowed upon 1957, when the beloved Dodgers left for "La-La Land" – as Borough President Marty Markowitz described Los Angeles Thursday. But "Dem Bums" wove themselves into the community in ways that perhaps are no longer feasible.

My elementary school in Midwood, P.S. 193, was named "The Gil Hodges School," after the first baseman for the "Boys of Summer" teams of the late '40s and '50s; he once lived across the street with his wife Joan, who remained long after Hodges passed in 1972. Hodges remains the player to receive the most votes for admittance to the Baseball Hall of Fame without ever crossing the threshold, fitting for a standout on teams that lost four World Series between 1947 and '54 – also finishing second in the National League three times and third once – before breaking through for the borough's only championship in 1955. "Wait 'til next year!" became a rally cry that resonates even still.

Brooklyn, you have only to wait for the fall.

Emphasis added; Couch is smart enough to know how 1957 cannot be 2012.